Do you have a favorite wild animal or bird? Here in Eastern Oregon we have lots of wildlife and easy access to a variety of nature’s habitats where they live. After all, the Blue Mountains are essentially in our back yard with an assortment of forests and streams and ecosystems, providing nice experiences right here at home seeing wildlife and learning about who they are and how they make their livings.

We also have travel opportunities to other places in the world and can enjoy wildlife wherever we choose to visit. Worldwide there are about 5,400 species of mammals and 10,000 species of birds, providing opportunities galore to see, learn about and experience new creatures.

In my travels, two animals and one bird are standouts. The animals are orangutans and tigers and the bird an Abyssinian blue breasted bee-eater (google bee-eater family). Abyssinia is the ancient name for Ethiopia, and while there I stumbled across a colony of these bee-eaters with nesting holes in a gravel bank. What a treat to see them flying back and forth finding food and feeding their children.

My animals are orangutans and tigers. “Orangutan” translates as “a person of the forest.” Our son Benjamin was living in Indonesia and I had a short-term job in Bangladesh, so on the way home stopped by for a visit. He had a bit of time off and had found a very interesting looking boat trip up a small river in southern Borneo.

Our boat had two levels. The bottom level was for the engine and the driver, kitchen and shower/toilet. The top level was for the visitors, out in the open with comfortable camp chairs and a canvas roof. In the evening it was changed into a bedroom by putting a mattress on the floor and lowering mosquito nets all around. The crew was a team of husband/driver and wife/cook/housekeeper. Additionally, we had a professional guide, Nina, a young woman with a great deal of knowledge about everything that we might see or ask about. The boat moved slowly and steadily along the little river, and occasionally we stopped to see orangutans and special jungle plants. I had never been in a proper jungle environment, and it was wonderful.

Orangutans are fabulous animals. Their unique faces, their heavy hair-coat, and their hands and feet both have opposable thumbs. On the hind feet the big toe becomes a thumb. They are quite clumsy on the ground, but when they want to move they just walk up a tree — the opposable thumb on the hind foot allows them to do that — and then move through the jungle and forest by brachiation, swinging from branch to branch through the top of the forest using their arms and occasionally their feet. It is a beautiful thing to see the fluid, graceful motion as they move along, and they can go very fast. An adult male orangutan can weigh 230 pounds and is tremendously strong, being able to move that much weight swinging by his arms. And we saw one female sitting at the base of a tree, tending her baby who had climbed up about 40 feet. She was entirely unconcerned. What would we humans think if our 2-year-old was that high up in a tree?

In India, Barbara and I saw tigers and had a close encounter in which an adult male did his roar. I had no idea that any animal could make such a stupendous sound, and then he did an astonishing flying leap into the underbrush and was gone. It was simultaneously astounding, terrifying and I instantly fell violently in love with tigers. They are an unsurpassably beautiful animal to behold, a top predator and tremendously athletic.

When I see something like these animals who are so well suited to their environment and ecological space, I like to consider the evolutionary aspects of how they adapted over thousands or millions of generations, developing into stable populations different than any other animal and thereby successful in their habitat. These animals and birds are surely a good example, and I feel very fortunate to have seen them in their natural territory. I can only hope they survive.